America was bruised, Friday, April 16, by yet another shooting, which claimed many lives: at least eight people lost their lives after a gunman burst into a postal sorting center in Indianapolis (United States). ) and opened fire, late Thursday night.
US President Joe Biden lamented the act, adding that gun violence “Bruised[ssai]t “ the soul of the American nation. “Far too many Americans die from gun violence every day”, he thus expressed by way of press release. Mr. Biden also ordered flags to be half-masted in federal public buildings.
“This morning, it is sorrow that lives in us”, lamented the mayor of Indianapolis (the capital of Indiana), Joe Hogsett. “The grief for the families of those killed, the grief for the employees who have lost their coworkers, and the grief for the many Americans who struggle to understand how tragedies like this continue to happen, time and time again. “
The attack, which took place at a Fedex warehouse near the airport in this Midwestern city, lasted only a handful of minutes. At around 11 p.m. local time on Thursday, the suspected gunman got out of his car with an assault rifle and “Started shooting at random, first in the parking lot”, then in the warehouse, “Before killing yourself”, said Craig McCartt, an Indianapolis police official, during a press briefing. Eight people were found dead and five others were hospitalized.
The federal police felt that it was “Premature to speculate” on the shooter’s mobiles, and FedEx has not yet indicated whether it was one of its employees.
Recurring plague
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by the deaths of members of our team in the tragic shooting at our premises in Indianapolis”, said the company specializing in freight transport, which is also one of the largest employers in the city, in a statement.
A man working at the site told local WISH-TV that he saw a person shoot a semi-automatic weapon, and that he heard more than ten shots (which he first took for noises coming from an engine). “I saw a man with some kind of submachine gun, an automatic weapon, and he was shooting in the open air”, Jeremiah Miller reported. “I bent down immediately, I was scared. “
In this city best known for its racing circuit, such a shooting is part of a series of dramas that have occurred in Atlanta, Boulder, Los Angeles … The shootings, which are a recurring scourge in the United States, regularly come to revive the debate on the proliferation of firearms in the country, with little concrete progress, however. “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, it is an international disgrace”, had blasted Joe Biden in early April while unveiling targeted measures to regulate access to firearms on American soil.
However, these measures have a reduced scope, due to the difficulty in making Congress adopt more daring measures (this would require a larger majority of elected Democrats). For now, many Americans remain very attached to their weapon (s). Many have even rushed to buy more since the start of the pandemic, and even more during the major anti-racist protests of spring 2020 and the electoral tensions of the fall.
Since 1er January, more than 12,000 people have already been killed by a firearm in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.
